In recent years, information can easily be transmitted to a large number of people as a result of the development of computer networks such as Internet. In such an environment, the intellectual productivity of the society at large may be improved rapidly and remarkably because the information disclosed by a person including his or her achievements, know hows and knowledge can easily be shared by many people. Therefore, disclosure of information has to be encouraged in the modern society.
However, with any of the existing systems, disclosure and utilization of information has not been effectively promoted so far. For example, while the number of times a particular piece of information has been accessed can be referenced in Internet, the evaluations given to it cannot be known to users. Therefore, users are not strongly motivated to access any particular piece of disclosed information to exploit its potential. In other words, there is a demand for means that can encourage users to access disclosed information and evaluate it for utilization.
In the field of communication using personal computers, a piece of information is often associated with a number of pieces of related information so that the user may access any of them. However, if there are too many pieces of information annexed to a specific piece of information, the user is more often than not left at a loss to single out the piece of information exactly he or she want to know. Thus, any existing information systems that can be shared by a number of users do not provide the user with an environment that makes him or her comfortable in retrieving disclosed information and exploit the potential it has.
(Objects)
Thus, a first object of the present invention is to provide an information sharing system adapted to receive references"" responses to the disclosed and uploaded information and generate evaluations for them by statistically processing the responses in order to encourage disclosure of information and promote the utilization of disclosed information in the information sharing system.
A second object of the invention is to provide an information sharing system adapted to feed back the evaluations given to a specific piece of disclosed information in order to give an incentive to the information discloser to further the disclosure of information.
A third object of the invention is to provide an information sharing system adapted to determining the degree of contribution of a specific user to the system on the basis of the frequency of access and the contents of the retrieved by the user and feeding it back to the user in order to give an incentive to the user to further the utilization of information.
A fourth object of the invention is to provide an information sharing system adapted to present any response to the disclosed information immediately to the information discloser once the notifying conditions provided by the information discloser are met in order to give an incentive to the information discloser to further the disclosure of information.
A fifth object of the invention is to provide an information sharing system adapted to improve the efficiency of utilizing disclosed information by controlling the presentation of additional pieces of information, if any, annexed to a particular piece of information on the basis of the semantic relationships (modification, addition, etc.) of the annexed information.
A sixth object of the invention is to provide an information sharing system adapted to control the presentation of annexed information as a function of information responders and other factors to make the utilization of information more adapted to circumstances.
A seventh object of the invention is to provide an information sharing system adapted to store users"" questions and, once a piece of disclosed information matching one or more than one specific questions is registered, notifying the information discloser of the questions in order to improve the efficiency of utilizing disclosed information that matches specific questions.
An eighth object of the invention is to provide a computer program product that can achieve the above first through seventh object of the invention.
(1st aspect of the invention)
An information sharing system using a computer so as to allow a plurality of users to share disclosed information, the system comprising:
input section for receiving responses to the disclosed information from referencers of the disclosed information;
evaluation information generation section for totalizing and processing the responses to generate evaluation information and storing the evaluation information after correlating it with the disclosed information; and
evaluation information notifying section for presenting the evaluation information generated by the evaluation information generation section.
With an information sharing system having a configuration as described above, various evaluation data become available on the basis of the responses obtained for disclosed information, which may be fed back to the users of the information sharing system to promote the use of the system.
(2nd aspect of the invention)
According to a second aspect of the invention, in an information sharing system according to the first aspect,
the evaluation information generation section has section for generating evaluation information on the disclosed information;
the section for generating evaluation information on the disclosed information being adapted to obtain information on the utility value of the disclosed information from the responses and generate evaluation for the disclosed information on the basis of the obtained information; and
the evaluation information notifying section has section for notifying the provider of the disclosed information of the evaluation information.
With the above arrangement, the evaluation information on the utility value of the disclosed information is fed back to the discloser of the disclosed information for further utilization so that the discloser may have an incentive to further the disclosure of information and promote the use of the system.
(3rd aspect of the invention)
According to a third aspect of the invention, in an information sharing system according to the first aspect,
the evaluation information generation section has section for generating evaluation information on the record of utilization of the information sharing system for each referencer;
the section for generating evaluation information on the record of utilization of the information sharing system for each referencer being so adapted to detect the utilization of the information sharing system on the basis of the responses and generate evaluation information on the record of utilization by totalizing the detections; and
the evaluation information notifying section has section for notifying the referencer of the disclosed information of the evaluation information.
With the above arrangement, the record of utilization of the information sharing system can be evaluated for each user and fed back to the user so that the user may have an incentive to further the utilization of the information sharing system.
(4th aspect of the invention)
According to a fourth aspect of the invention, the information sharing system according to the first aspect further comprises:
utilization conditions storage section for storing notifying conditions for notifying the responses to the information provider of the disclosed information;
the notifying conditions being modifiable only by the information provider; and
response notifying section for notifying the information provider of any response meeting the notifying conditions.
With the above arrangement, the information discloser may be directly and selectively notified of the responses of information referencers according to the conditions provided in advance by the information discloser so that the information discloser may have an incentive to update the disclosed information.
(5th aspect of the invention)
According to a fifth aspect of the invention, there is provided a information sharing system using a computer so as to allow a plurality of users to share disclosed information, the system comprising:
input section for receiving additional information to be added to the disclosed information from a reference of the disclosed information;
semantic relationship specifying section for specifying a semantic relationship of the additional relative to the disclosed information;
additional information accumulation section for storing the additional information with the semantic relationship; and
additional information presentation section for taking out the semantic relationship from the additional information accumulation section and presenting the additional information on the basis of the semantic relationship when presenting the disclosed to an information referencer.
With an information sharing system having a configuration as described above, whenever there is provided additional information for the disclosed information, the presentation of the additional information can be controlled on the basis of the semantic relationship (modification, addition, etc.) of the additional information relative to the disclosed information so that the disclosed information may be utilized more efficiently along with the additional information.
(6th aspect of the invention)
According to a sixth aspect of the invention, an information sharing system according to the fifth aspect further comprises:
storage section for storing presentation conditions for the additional information; and
additional information presentation control section for controlling the presentation of the additional information on the basis of the semantic relationship between the additional information and the disclosed information and the presentation conditions stored in the storage section.
With the above arrangement, the additional information can be presented according to the semantic relationship between the additional disclosed and the disclosed information and controlled according to a different set of presentation conditions, which may be, for example the attributes of the information referencer so that the additional disclosed may be presented according to the circumstances of utilization of information and hence may be utilized more efficiently.
(7th aspect of the invention)
According to a seventh aspect of the invention, there is provided an information sharing system using a computer so as to allow a plurality of users to share disclosed information, the system comprising:
request input section for receiving and storing the requests of information requesters; and
request particulars presentation section for analyzing the contents of the disclosed information when the information is registered by an information discloser and taking out requests related to the disclosed information from the request input section to present the requests to the information discloser.
With an information sharing system having a configuration as described above, requests including questions from information requesters can be received and stored so that, when disclosed information that meets the requests is registered subsequently, the requests can be presented to the information discloser. Then, the user may reliably obtain the information he or she want from the information sharing system to promote the utilization of the system.
(8th aspect of the invention)
According to an eighth aspect of the invention, there is provided a computer program product that can be applied to a computer system to realize a information sharing system according to any of the first through seventh aspects of the invention.
Additional object and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The object and advantages of the invention may be realized and obtained by section of the instrumentalities and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims.